What sort of preventive care does the older horse need? I think it’s really important
and you’re all getting the annual physicals on your horse, as they get older you might
want to up that to twice a year, because things are happening faster, changes in their body.
When you do this physical, you should probably have start doing some blood work and the blood
work can be just a simple CBC Chemistry, Serum Chemistry and you’re looking at liver function
and kidney function and make sure that they aren’t anemic and look at the white blood
cells. But maybe if they’re showing you any signs at all, you should do some metabolism
or some endocrine testing for the Cushing’s disease we talked about, because the sooner
you catch something like that and begin to treat it, the better you’ll be.
Don’t forget the vaccinations, because we said earlier their immune systems, like everything
else, will begin to shutdown. They need all the help they can get. There is one study
that vaccinated young or mature horses, and then also vaccinated older horses and then
they challenge them with the disease, and I think it was Rhino. And who do you think,
of the two groups of horses, came down with disease? The older ones, because they did
not have as good a vaccine response.
So you want to make sure to work with your vet and say, you know what, I have an older
horse, and what sort of – what changed my vaccine program that I’ve been doing all
this life should I have now that he’s older.
Same with parasite control. We talked about maybe one of the reasons that they’re not
as digestively efficient is a lifetime of parasites doing damage in their intestine.
You have to keep providing parasite control as they’re older, because now they’re
not as good at fighting off the worms. So you have to step in there and make sure that
they’re still protected.
You can’t forget about the hoof care just because they’re retired. There was a slide
earlier that said they’re more prone to laminitis, hoof abscesses, arthritis, you
want to make sure that foot, that leg, is able to break over as easily as possible.
So you’ve got to get your farrier out there. Maybe they don’t need shoes anymore, but
they need trimmed regularly, it’s very important.
So as horses age, they’re called hypsodont meaning their teeth grow all the time, like
rabbits. They have a lot in common with rabbits actually. And their incisor angle, it starts
off kind of not vertical, but fairly up and down, you know the top and the bottom. As
they grow older, the angle of the incisors gets longer. So they’re less able to grasp
and cut off pasture, long stem forage, okay, so that’s one problem as they age.
Also, as their teeth are growing out, and here is your word for the evening, write this
one down. If you have a space between your teeth, because when the tooth starts growing
its really – it’s got a wide grinding surface and as it grows up out of the horse’s
mouth, it gets smaller and smaller and smaller. So if they were touching when the horse was
five this is growing up and out, by the time they’re 15 or 20, they’re growing apart,
there’s a space in the teeth, and it’s called diastema and two spaces are diastemata.
It’s a pretty cool word, huh? You might need it for a crossword puzzle, I’m just saying.
But so as their teeth are growing, there might be a loose tooth, and it’s really, really
excruciatingly painful to try and eat with a loose tooth. I had a horse that I rescued,
because that’s what I did two or three jobs ago, and the people call me crying they were
going to put her down finally. Amber, she was 30, it was her time. And I said could
I come out and look at her. Well, we’ve had everyone look at her, we’ve done blood work,
we’ve done her teeth done, there is nothing you can do. Well okay, if you want to look
at her, fine. She had a loose tooth in there fell out in my hand, instantly she began eating,
in 30 days I didn’t recognize her. She went from a three to a six. And she was going to
get put down. So, I’m just saying don’t overlook how important teeth are.
If you lose a tooth, so now she has a new problem, because her teeth grew all the time,
but they didn’t – one was missing, so there was nothing to keep the tooth from the
top or from the bottom from growing up in the hole. So then you get what’s known as
a step mouth, a less aggressive version of this is the wave mouth and I have pictures
to show you, also periodontal disease abscess. How do you know your horse has dental disease?
You’re never going to see these things, because you’re going to have the dentist
out twice a year and you’re never going to let the horse get this bad, but if you
did, there is the quitting we talked about, slow eating, tilting the head while you’re
eating, slobbering, dropping the head while you’re eating, not eating well and then
seeing some undigested feed in a manure.